Want to Get Value from Your Integration Investment? Choose Neutrality.

On Tuesday, Salesforce announced it would acquire MuleSoft in a multi-billion-dollar deal aimed at enabling customers to “connect all of the information throughout their enterprise across all public and private clouds and data sources,” according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Essentially, what Benioff is paying an enormous premium to build for Salesforce is what we already do for our customers.

It’s natural to wonder what this merger means for TIBCO. The acquisition does two key things for the broader software market:

1. The numbers involved confirm the mission-critical importance of integration to the future of enterprise applications and digital business. We know integration is at the heart of digital transformation, but it’s not just about API management and connectivity. Businesses need to do more than transfer customer data between a couple of systems.

2. Neutrality matters. TIBCO just became the only viable — that is, neutral and independent — enterprise integration option for a whole lot of potential new customers.

Why integration is essential

We’ve seen how organizations increasingly need to operate in real time and gain more insight from their data with rapidly developing technologies like machine learning and predictive analytics. The goal is to transform data into action — streamline operation, drive contextual decisions, differentiate. MuleSoft only does part of this.

While Salesforce may be a big name, they’ve just shown they’re playing catchup to TIBCO’s flexible integration and augmented intelligence capabilities and hoping to assemble something akin to the TIBCO Connected Intelligence Cloud. But we already know connectivity is not enough to run customer experiences or operations. From the Internet of Things to artificial intelligence, the technologies that define digital transformation rely on data science prowess to deliver business value — TIBCO has it in spades. And, we’re still innovating.

Why neutrality is priceless

The biggest issue for MuleSoft is that they have been acquired by an application vendor. They are losing any semblance of neutrality, which should obviously impact customer trust in their ability to provide equal connectivity to applications other than Salesforce, as well as to other cloud ecosystems. As of Tuesday, who does MuleSoft serve?

As noted on MarketWatch, “A common question from analysts in a conference call the companies held Tuesday afternoon — possibly second behind ‘Why isn’t Marc Benioff on this call?’ — focused on customers typically wanting an independent vendor for the type of service MuleSoft provides, since it has to interact with so many different programs from different companies.”

MuleSoft customers are right to wonder whether they’ll be forced into the Salesforce system. Further, Salesforce Lightning (which will host the Salesforce Integration Cloud) is a low-code, scripted configuration type of environment, while MuleSoft is pure Java. These appeal to different audiences, and it’s far from clear which will survive in the end (though I think I know). Product plans and commitments that have been promised to MuleSoft customers and prospects may no longer be reliable.

Connecting and collecting data to fuel innovation is the way of the future and we’ve known that for a long time. Salesforce knows it, too — and so do a lot of other enterprises who want to pursue digital transformation on their own terms. TIBCO is already the complete data integration, analysis, prediction, and visualization platform that Salesforce wants to be.

The TIBCO Connected Intelligence Cloud embodies a single, neutral, interconnected offering of products and services unrivaled by anyone else in the integration or augmented intelligence space.

Learn more about how TIBCO has remained at the forefront of innovation with unbiased, market-leading technology, helping thousands of customers on their digital transformation journey.

Thomas Been is responsible for worldwide marketing at TIBCO. Prior to becoming CMO,
Thomas held the role of TIBCO's vice president of product marketing, where he crossed organizations' boundaries to support cloud, mobile, and Fast Data initiatives. Throughout his 10+ years with TIBCO, he's held a range of roles, both technical and sales-oriented, creating some of TIBCO's key customer relationships. Prior to TIBCO, Thomas helped companies integrate their own systems and their ecosystem, and has been involved in key transformation projects based on integration in various industries such as Life Sciences, Telecoms, Transportation and Logistics. Thomas holds a Master's Degree in Physics from the Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis in France.